Archive Reviews

Not very often does an iPhone game really catch my attention and therefore my wallet. When I was younger I would play games on our computer, a Windows 95 machine, for hours. One of my favorite games was a little pre-bundled Windows 95 game called Pipe's Dream in which you rotated pipes so that sewage could flow safely across the screen. If you prevented an unsightly mess then you received points and moved unto the next level.

Cannons from Readdle is a new take on this old game. Instead of rotating pipes you rotate fuses to set off a series of cannons. There are two play modes: story and quick play. Unlike Pipe's dream there is a story that involves pirates, treasure maps, and navel warfare. It is not a literary masterpiece by any means, but is a really sets the mood. Thankfully it can have multiple save files, which is really convenient if you let family members play on your iPhone; this is something I really wish that other iPhone games had. The game was fun, fast-paced, and overall I really enjoyed it. The game also possesses some RPG elements to it with the ability to upgrade your cannons to larger and point scoring machines of war. Basically, the more booty you acquire the more you can upgrade your cannons and the bigger your cannons the more points you score.

The sound is great and really gets you into the mood of the game and makes Cannons feel more like a classic gameboy game. The graphics are about as good as you can get for a puzzle game, but the hand drawn backgrounds and sprites are pleasing to look at. The game also lets you upload you scores to online leaderboards, which is a nice touch. I would have personally preferred to see something more social like OpenFeint, the leaderboard/chat/social network publishing community present in other iPhone games. I think this application would really benefit from integrating the free OpenFeint platform especially considering that puzzle games really emphasize on obtaining the highest score possible, but that is really my only gripe.

Right now this game is $2.99 in the iTunes store and I recommend it. I honestly was not expecting the game to be this enjoyable, especially with the pirates theme. I think Readdle really made a fun little game here. It is nothing highly remarkable, but nonetheless fun. It is not always the flashy games that you end up playing over and over game but volumes can be said sound puzzle games like Tetris and Cannons.